“Draz.” Her gaze finds mine, and she steps into my embrace. “You’re my home now. Where we live doesn’t matter.”
My heart stutters, and I hardly believe the words from her mouth. It is one thing to accept me as her mate when I am deep inside her, when she is overcome with sensation, or to even admit she is mine later.
“Draz, don’t be so surprised. I love you,” she says, blinking up at me, her heart shining in her expressive human eyes.
“My heart,” I croak, sweeping her up into my arms. “You are the force I will navigate my life by. I will no longer look to the asteroids overhead for direction. My direction does not lie in the sky and the space above, but with you. You hold all of me in your small, human hands.”
Her legs wrap around my waist, and she opens her mouth as I press a savage kiss against it. Desire rises in me, a hot, living thing, as her soft human tongue slides against a fang.
“Bath,” she manages, clasping my face in her hands. “I have to check on my crew.”
I grunt, annoyance flaring in me, along with pride. My Ni-Kee.
“You are a good leader,” I tell her. “Even if I selfishly wish you were not.”
“If you had your way, I would be screwed nine ways to Sunday and pregnant in no time,” she laughs.
“That is correct,” I agree. “But I will honor your wishes, my heart.”
“All of them?” she asks, angling her face at me.
I grin down at her. “What is it you wish for, my Ni-Kee?”
“If I’m going to stay here—”
“If?” I growl the word, tightening my grip on the muscled curve of her ass.
“I want to be a warlord, too. I want the equivalent of my rank on Earth here. I can’t just sit around and do nothing. I want to do what I was trained to do.”
“You would undergo the trials to become a warlord?”
“Do women not do that?” Her tone is accusatory, and I blink in surprise.
“Of course they do. But a human has not.”
“I can do it.”
I nod once, thinking it over. “If that is what you wish, then so be it, my heart.” I scrape my teeth over the tender spot under her jaw, savoring her soft moan.
“It is.”
I lift her easily, and she wraps her legs around my bare torso, her heat seeping into my skin.
“I thought you wanted a bath,” I say, amused and aroused. The tip of my cock prods against her, and she leans forward, biting my neck. I groan, the sensation of her blunt teeth nipping at my skin heating my blood.
“I do. But I wanted a hug, too.”
“This is not a normal embrace,” I inform her. “But if you like, I can think of another embrace I would accept from you?”
“Oh?” she pants, her legs tightening around me, her muscles twitching. “What’s that?”
“I want to sink into your wet heat and feel you clench all around me with my name on your lips.”
Her whole body shudders, and I smirk, my possessiveness roaring to life.
“I want to wipe away the memory of that bastard’s hands on your skin, of his words in your ears. I want to replace them with me, filling you so deeply you can hardly breathe.”
Instead of biting me again, or even grinding against me, Niki slumps, her head limp on my shoulder.
Worry tightens my shoulders, and I walk her into my circular bedroom. Morning light streams through the clear apertures, illuminating the dusting of brown spots across her nose and cheeks.
“I was so scared,” she says, and wetness drips down my shoulder. “I thought you were hurt, or dead, and I couldn’t stand the thought of it.” Her chin tilts up at me, and my heart stutters with love.
“Ni-Kee,” I murmur, pressing my lips against the droplet of eye water on her exposed cheek. “I was scared for you. I was proud of you and terrified all at once. The Roth… they will come for your people, once word gets out about your compatible biology.”
“We can’t let it happen to anyone. They are…”
“They are a troubled species,” I finish the thought for her. “It would not be pleasant for the human females.”
“Draz,” she says, peppering my face with tiny kisses that send pinpricks of awareness through my body. “I love you. I love you so much, more than I ever thought possible.”
“Be honest, my heart, you did not think it was possible to love me at all a week and a half ago.”
She grins up at me, and I pick a leaf from her braid. “Oh, is that right?”
“Very right,” I say solemnly. “And I am very glad that my courtship proved just how wrong you were.”
“Your courtship?” she huffs, disentangling her legs from my body. “This is what you consider courtship?”
“I brought you can-dee. I fed you, kept you safe—”
At this, she holds up a hand. “One word. Snails.”
“The snails were not a part of my courtship plan,” I admit. “But I did nurse you back to health, and feed you many bowls of broth, and I helped you when you were too weak to walk to do your—”
“Draz!” she says, grinning and shaking her head. “Don’t bring that up.”
I clutch her tightly to me. “I will take care of you, my Ni-Kee. Forever. It will be my privilege and my honor.”
She sighs, melting into me. A stick caught in her snarled hair jabs me in the throat, and I pluck it out, tossing it on the floor.
“Perhaps you should bathe now.”
Laughing, she backs up, sniffing at her armpits. “I thought you like the way I smell. Actually, it seems like all you Suevans do, which, quite frankly, is weird as fuck.”
“I do, and we do, and it is normal as fuck.”
She laughs harder at this, her eyes creased as she smiles. The laughter dies, and she runs a hand through her tangles.
“I’m worried for my crew member that’s still out there.”
“I understand. Take care of your body, and I will arrange for food and clothes while you bathe, and then you can meet your crew and tackle the problem as you see fit.”
My tail lashes back and forth. “And I will send word that you wish to undergo the trials and become the second warlord to Edrobaz. No one will dare cross a mated pair of warlords.”
Her smile turns vicious, and I return it with pleasure before steering her to the door that leads to the bathing room.
Her eyes widen as she takes it in, a small sigh of happiness escaping her.
“I think I could get used to this,” she says, and my heart fills with joy at the words.
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
OceanofPDF.com
NIKI
Everything about Edrobaz surprises me. The way the Suevans meld technology and nature is impressive and cohesive, the living trees that house them intimidating and beautiful. The ‘bathing room,’ as Draz called it, has running water, though I can’t figure out how they manage to pump it all the way up here, nor how seamless everything is, wooden and stone and a glass-like substrate that lets both fresh air and light through while still acting like solid matter.
I bet Carmen’s having a field day.
I towel off my hair, the cloth so unlike any fiber I’ve used before that if Draz hadn’t pointed it out to me, I wouldn’t have known that’s what it was for. It’s thin and stretchy, but manages to soak nearly all the excess water from me.
“Food is here, my heart,” Draz calls, and my stomach rumbles at the mere mention of it. My limbs are limp and wobbly with exhaustion, and all I want to do is stuff my face and curl up in a ball next to Draz and sleep off the remnants of my snail given weakness.
I roll my shoulders back. It’s out of the question. I need to eat and get dressed and find out who is missing from my crew as soon as possible, break the news that we can’t return to Earth, and try to convince my crew that we can make the best of this world.
That I love Draz.
That I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
I swallow hard. It’s not going to be an easy conversation, no matter how happy I am, because I know them. They’ll like having their choices and future taken away as little as I did, and I’ve come out on top, married to an alien I’ve managed to fall head over heels for.
